By Hamza Ameer

Lahore, Jun 8 (IANS): In a shocking incident, an elderly woman died at a hospital in Lahore after a former security guard reportedly posed as a doctor and performed a surgery on her.

The incident occurred at Lahore's Mayo Hospital where Shameema Begum, 80, lost her life on Sunday, two weeks after Muhammad Waheed Butt, a former security guard at the hospital, attempted to treat her.

After the surgery was done in Mayo Hospital, which is a public hospital, its administration blatantly ignored its responsibility, stating that it cannot keep up with what every doctor or anyone else is doing in the hospital.

"We can't keep up with what every doctor and what everyone is doing at all times. It's a large hospital," said an official from the hospital administration.

Interestingly, before the surgery was performed, Begum's family was also paying the security guard Butt for home visits to dress her wound.

However, when the wound condition worsened and the bleeding and pain increased, her family returned her to the hospital, where they discovered what had happened.

As per reports, Begum's body has been kept for an autopsy to ascertain if her cause of death was due to complications from the botched surgery.

The police authorities have arrested the security guard and taken him into custody.

"The guard has been charged and is in police custody," said Lahore police spokesperson Ali Safdar.

It was also revealed that Begum was not the only patient, who was paying for home visits to Butt.

"Butt had posed as a doctor and made home visits to other patients in the past also," stated a staff member of Mayo Hospital, adding that Butt was fired two years ago for trying to extort money from patients.

Similar stories of security guards working at public hospitals posing as doctors and medical experts have also surfaced from others parts of the country, especially from the Punjab province.

In May this year, a man was arrested for posing as a doctor at Lahore's General Hospital and extorting money from patients.

In 2016, a woman was arrested for posing to be a neurosurgeon. The woman had been conducting operations for at least eight months alongside qualified doctors at Lahore's Services Hospital, the country's second largest health facility.